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news:
CSULB carries
the bomb when threatened
By Akira Hayakawa
On-line Forty-Niner
Bomb threats continue
to pose a problem for Cal State Long Beach today as they did
throughout the school's history.
The latest one
happened at the University Library in the 2001 spring semester.
Officials had announced a volunteer evacuation over the public
address system.
In this case, the
suspect, Hasan Hasan, a mathematics graduate student was arrested
and went to court. The trial was eventually dismissed due
to a lack of evidence.
The university
has often received this type of threat. Many bomb threats
were made in 1980s, but there were less threats in '90s, according
to Mike Boldon, a 13-year-officer with the University Police.
At the peak, 12
bomb threats were made in five weeks in spring of 1986. Five
were made on the Engineering building. No bombs were found
in each of the cases.
Campus bomb statistics
are not available at this time, but will be in about a month,
according to Greg Pascal, communication supervisor of the
University Police. Pascal can remember only a few bomb threats,
including the one last semester, in the five years he has
worked for the University Police.
Bomb threats are
usually received by telephone calls, either at the University
Police, or the local facility or office, Capt. Stan Skipworth
of the University Police said.
"When a bomb
threat is received, the first thing you want to try to do
is to determine the validity of the threat," he said.
Any type of peculiarity -- tone of voice, accent, even language
-- is useful.
"We try to
identify any specificity of the threat," he said. "We
want to know where at and any facility they refer to, at what
time, what type of the device, those kind of things."
After determining
the validity, police check the area, the facility and possibly
interview witnesses, depending on the situation. If a suspicious
device or suspicious conditions are found, evacuation may
be necessary, Skipworth said.
In some cases,
a bomb did explode. For example, former President Stephen
Horn's office received a bomb threat in 1971, and a pipe bomb
exploded in the basement of the old administration building.
However, the majority of bomb threats have been pranks according
to past issues of the Daily Forty-Niner. Either no bomb was
found or the device failed to explode.
Yet the University
Police take them seriously and care very much about threats.
And that, CSULB criminal justice professor Sam Torres said,
is important.
"When a bomb
threat is called in, it has to be taken seriously," he
said, "even if it's a hoax."
"[We care]
not because it's our job," Skipworth said, "[but]
because it's the right thing to do, because making a bomb
threat is the wrong thing to do, and because I don't feel
that people deserve to be hurt."
The University
Police have good cooperation with other departments so that
they can respond to any threat effectively. Without networking
and cooperating with other departments, the University Police
itself could not preserve safety on campus, he said.
"The leadership
here [on] this campus worked diligently to develop an integrated
response plan," Skipworth said, "and because of
that, we have a very well-prepared process to respond to any
type of threat."
The reasons and
intentions of people making a bomb threat vary.
"Somebody
wants to pay back to school, teachers, administration because
they feel treated wrongly," Torres said. "[Or] somebody
who's emotionally unstable."
He also said that
someone may just want to postpone a test. A student may be
a suspect in this environment since most are students.
Skipworth said
the most of the time people that make such a threat are frustrated
with a particular thing that they experienced, and they seek
to allieviate their frustration and obtain satisfaction.
Both Boldon and
Torres said the university tends to receive a bomb threat
during test seasons. That seems true. Most bomb threats were
reported during midterms and finals, according to several
past issues of the Daily Forty-Niner.
Making a bomb threat
is a crime -- most are felonies. Depending on the intention
of the person who made the threat, maximum punishment is a
$1,000 fine and four years in jail, Skipworth said.
When a bomb threat
is made, local law enforcement should be notified. Skipworth
reminds people not to panic, and to leave the area calmly.
He also said people should follow all instructions given by
law enforcement.
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